


Reminisce

by nevermeansforever



Series: Remembering One and Learning All Over Seven [2]
Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Childhood Memories, Gen, Good Brother Luther Hargreeves, Good Sister Vanya Hargreeves, Light Angst, Luther Hargreeves Needs A Hug, No Incest, Not Beta Read, POV Vanya Hargreeves, Painter Luther Hargreeves, Vanya Hargreeves Needs A Hug
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-01
Updated: 2019-06-16
Packaged: 2020-04-06 06:45:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,703
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19057345
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nevermeansforever/pseuds/nevermeansforever
Summary: Vanya founds a room long forgotten in the depts of the mansion. It brings back memories that wasn't hers.





	1. The Room

  
Vanya found the room, one slow-passing afternoon. While searching for something else that wasn't important to begin with, something she can't even tell now what it was. It was probably an excuse anyway, to explore the home that was never theirs, at least not in the way that ever mattered.

Dust and emptiness had been covering all the surfaces so far,like all the other rooms in the mansion. Well, it was not empty of furniture at least, only empty of people.

Giant windows were letting in the afternoon sun, over old sheets that was laying on just as old furniture, like tired ghosts resting for a breather. She giggles to herself a little with the thought, thinking if Klaus would like that metaphor. It was sometimes hard to tell with Number Four.

The room is as spacious as they got, high ceilings and hardwood floors that was maybe a ballroom once. With chandeliers and expensive draperies like the ones in the movies. She can imagine it very easily.

Now it looks like an abandoned art studio.With the dried up paint all over the floors, different colors splattered around at probably different times.One or two old paint brushes clamped with time and forgotten paint over them and empty easels proped on side waiting to be used once again.  
And then, there were paintings all over the place, stacked against walls and racks, covered up with white sheets, hiding what's underneath.

She is not sure what prompted her to pull one off of the stacks.Curiosity perhaps. Or just lack of something better to do with herself. And...she doesn't know what she expected but not "The Birth of Venus" by Sandro Botticelli.

Well, it's not the original thing of course, at least that's what Vanya hopes, just a perfect replica. Under that stands " The Last Supper" and she briefly wonders if there is a theme there.

She looks at all the other ones from that stack. All replicas of famious paintings.Most she doesn't remember their names but she knows them all, from lessons or somewhere else.Images with no names attached to them. Sounds familiar for some reason she can't tell.

She pulls another sheet off of the stack next to this one. Expecting more replicas. And was she surprised to find one.Just not of famous paintings but of herself.

It's not a big painting by any means and as she will learn in a few minutes, from the little scrabble on it's back, it is called "A Glimpse of Seven"

She thinks, looking at the familiar display of their childhood hallway and her bedroom door, there is probably not a name more fitting for it. It is a painting of a glimpse, from a decade ago perhaps.

There is a lump in her throat now that refuses to leave.

A little girl with bangs stands in the middle of a bare bedroom, playing a violin.The room's door is only half way open, not an invitation but a small mistake.This girl in the painting has her eyes closed, with a little smile on her face. She looks confident with the instrument in her hands, back straight and ready to play.

A soft light, afternoon sun just like the one in this room right now, comes behind the window after the girl, giving the whole painting a soft hue.

Vanya can feel the tears on her cheeks but she doesn't understand why they are there.Maybe because how she can almost hear the soft notes coming from the girl's violin, with how detailed the painting is. She can even see the hairs on her bow, the notes on the music sheets that's laying on the ground at her feet, her eyelashes and the little dent on her door, which Diego left there with a knife when they were thirteen.

She sees the air around her, more colorful than the rest of the painting, and knows it must be her music that somehow someone managed to capture in a painting. She pries her eyes from the girl to the bottom right corner and there it is, L. Hargreeves written in barely readable cursive.

She doesn't know what to think. _Who else did he paint? When? Why would he paint me?_  This strangely feels like the time when she learned that she is not actually ordinary.

Learning that maybe she was not as invisible as she always thought.

Only now, the feeling is not poisoned with the knowledge of betrayal.And the proof is not blood painting her hands, but a painting of her. _Why did he never showed these to us? Is this girl really me? Is there more?_

She puts the painting to the side with shaking hands. And looks for others with a new found urgency. Eventhough she knows these must have been here maybe longer than a decade and they won't be going anywhere probably longer than that.

And stack after stack she founds them. Scattered between sceneries and fruit bowls, are canvases full of numbers. One through Seven.

Some were bright, like "Five's Laugh" which she had forgotten over time. How usually stoic Five would dissolve into giggles and laughs until he was red in the face and there were tears in his eyes from laughing too hard.Another part of Five that was lost in the apocalypse.And somehow it was here in front of her. Captured forever in paint, in a way that made her both wanted to cry with grief and laugh with joy, along with the boy in the painting.

Another one, "Even" is from the day they had a water fight in the garden. Dad had been out of town and Allison asked if they can have a picnic in the garden for lunch.There is only Diego, Klaus and Ben in the painting, a tangled mess of limbs and joy but she remembers how they all had been there. One of the few good memories she collected over their childhoods.

Then there were the ones that tore a hole in her chest, made it hard to breath. "The Horror" was a little boy with the academy uniform and mask.Covered with blood from head to toe, standing on a pool of red and staring at something only he can see. There were no eldritch monsters in sight though, only a boy whose face depicting an expression of pure horror and grief.

There was one with "Allison" , her knees pulled to her chest while she sat on the ground of what Vanya guessed the greenhouse, moonlight highlighting the scar just above her elbow. Coffee brown eyes with too much pain. At that moment, Vanya understood what she was looking at, not at The Rumor with a smile sharper than knives or Allison Hargreeves, the Hollywood star. Just the painting of a little girl named Allison who was hurt one too many times.

And there were others. Paintings of her.

With the rest of them, walking into a bowling alley in the night, that had a neon sign.( _there had been cupcakes for their birthday with candles and everything,she still doesn't know how Klaus did get them for free)_

Her, reading under the tables in the library with Five, because he was supposed to be in training and she was supposed to be practicing violin. _(he always came back next week,no matter how much scolding he got)_

Her,sleeping on the kitchen counter with an uneaten peanut butter and marshmallow sandwich in the middle of the night. _(she never thought anyone else knew what she did or cared enough)_

Diego and her, both of them standing on each side of Mom, watching over her as she cooked in the kitchen. _(she remembered Diego teaching her how to hold a knife as Mom watched them with a smile)_

She can't help the sob that escapes her or the ones after that and wonders which one is sillier, crying over someone else's memories because they are not yours. Or crying over yours because you forgot them.

The sun is long gone by the time she is calmed down. Slowly, she puts the paintings back to their places under the sheets. They don't deserve to be hidden like this in her opinion but she knows uncovering them is not her decision to make.

She thinks, while she closes the door behind her, maybe she did know this room was haunted from the start. Maybe not by spirits, only by old memories.


	2. The Kitchen

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Vanya can't sleep.

She couldn't sleep.

It was almost like sleep was a memory that was particularly hard to remember, buried deep in her mind. The more she tried to catch it the more blurry it got.

That's why she was sitting in the kitchen, in the middle of the night, with a cup of black coffee and red rimmed eyes. Listening to the sounds the medication silenced before.

The soft murmurs of Klaus sitting on the windowsill and talking with Ben, sounds of his cigarette burning and his fingers tapping a rhythm she doesn't know.

Diego is in his room, listening to old tapes he found in a box inside his wardrobe, just like the past two days. He thinks no one knows he is dancing alone in his room to Abba in the middle of the night and she can't help but smile.

Five is having another argument with Dolares which seems like he is losing.

Alison just finished crying herself to sleep after talking to Claire.

She also hears footsteps.Too heavy to belong to anyone but one person she knows.The one person she is not ready to see yet. She can get out of the kitchen long before he steps inside.

She stays.

He comes to the kitchen a minute later, wearing the weight of the past thirty years and way too many layers for it to be comfortable.She can see the beginnings of worry lines at the corners of his eyes when they make eye contact.

She hates the way he stops dead in the middle of the treshold when they do, like he is not sure if it's okay for him to step in, to come near her. She briefly thinks what her therapist would say about her first thought being that she thought he was afraid of her. It is even funnier when she realizes a second later that he is also thinking the same thing about himself.

Or maybe she just has a fucked up sense of humor and they are not afraid of each other at all, only afraid of themselves.

She gives him a small smile, to show that it's okay. Or as okay as they ever are, ever had been. That, at least, snaps him out of it.

He clears his throat and finally, slowly steps inside. "You couldn't sleep?" he asks while walking towards the other side of the kitchen and start getting things out of the fridge and cupboards.

"Yeah..um I-..." she glances at her coffee, the dark liquid looks almost omnious under this lighting.

"No, i couldn't." she finishes quietly, not knowing what else to say. And she honestly expects the conversation to die down there. The silence to become suffocating until one of them can't stand it anymore.

But Luther turns around to face her and she doesn't know what he sees but something changes a little in his posture for the first time since their father's death.

He looks less like he is trying to disappear inside his clothes and more like the time when Ben had a panic attack that one time in the bowling alley and he had to help him calm down.Or when they brought Diego with a bleeding wound on his head from a mission and Luther carried him all the way to infirmary.

"Anything on your mind?" he asks again but voice more confident. She is not sure how to begin to answer let alone if she even wants to.

He goes back to whatever he is doing at the counter while waiting for her to talk. They are back to silent but this one is not suffocating, just patient.

He finally turns around with two cups and sits across from her, then slides one of the cups across the table towards her like a peace offering after pulling her coffee cup towards himself.

It is honey milk. She smiles.

They sip quietly for a while until she feels like she can talk again.The milk is warm and sweet in a comforting way. "I found the room." she says suddenly "The one with the um...with your paintings."

Luther looks up with wide eyes. "They were really beautiful." she adds like giving a secret eventhough anyone who can see them would think the same. Maybe the secret is she saw them in the first place.

"Thank you." he almost whispers but he doesn't meet her eyes.

She can tell something is not quite right, the Luther she knows would flush red and get bashful, maybe try to explain why he painted them all in a hurried and endearing way.

She tries once more "Are you working on anything right now?" while taking another sip, her hopefulness reflecting on her voice.

"No um...i- i don't well...i don't paint anymore." he says, still not meeting her eyes. "Not since the accident."

His hands are shaking a little, barely noticable, and he stops holding the mug and locks his fingers together, the way he used to do when they were little children and he couldn't quite control his strength yet, an old habit he couldn't completely drop.

"My hands, they...they changed. Got all..." he flexes them as if to show "...like this. I tried once, after the accident but... i just can't paint the way i used to-...i used to can." his voice cracks in the middle of the sentence and she can now see why he is not meeting her eyes, because he is trying to hide the tears that are threathing to fall.

She doesn't even realize she stood up until her arms are already wrapping around him.

He is so big. She is barely even half a head tall while he is sitting and she is standing up but he feels so fragile right now in her arms. His head is buried on the crook of her neck and one of her arms is cradling his head while the other is wrapped around his now giant shoulders.

He tenses only for a moment before something inside him _just gives_ and he starts crying. Pained little sobs that he still tries to hold inside slowly shaking them both while his arms hugs back carefully, still making sure he doesn't hurt her.

She can feel his tears, warm and probably salty on her.

Her own tears blurs the soft kitchen lights.

They stay like that until Luther quiets down and her own tears dries, leaving a second set of tear tracks on her face. Eventually they pull back from each other and it feels like unwrapping the bandage of a freshly healed wound.

It is late.

They quietly clean their mugs before tiredly climbing the stairs back to their rooms.The only sounds she can hear now are the creakings of the old mansion settling and the soft breathings of their siblings.

They both stop in front of her room and she tries to think of something to say but Luther just gives her a soft smile, like he is remembering a fond memory and ruffles her hair. She is surprised and there is a part of her, the part that is named Number Seven, that feels giddy a little with the simple gesture.

Luther says "Goodnight Vanya." softly so they don't wake anyone up and then turns to leave only to stop and add gently, like an afterthought " And maybe ease up on the coffee before bed, yeah? "

She rolls her eyes and says "Okay, _Mom_." with a smile before she says goodnight.

Maybe it is not such a bad idea, she did heard from somewhere after all, that warm milk can help with insomnia.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi everyone! This took me *literally* forever to write and i'm still not completely satisfied with it but i already deleted and rewrote it one time so...well it's not going to get any better than this i think. Please let me know what you think and if i should edit it in the future? Thanks so much for reading and supporting<3

**Author's Note:**

> Hi everyone! First of all thanks so much to everyone who left a kudos or a comment to Memories! Thanks to you guys i decided to write this sequel. Secondly i hope you'll like this one too,i tried my best. Lastly i promise i will give you guys Luther/Vanya hug y'all are expecting. Again thanks sm for reading!


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